The gas company recently sent homeowners on my street a notice that they will be installing natural gas service over the next couple of months. The timing couldn't be better from my point of view. I have a
10 year-old oil tank the insurance co. wants replaced, and a furnace (FHA) that dates from the early 70s. I also have a rented oil-fired hot water heater. To my mind, a gas conversion was a no-brainer since all those things need to go away soon.
I've gotten 2 quotes so far and was astounded at the cost. The equipment itself isn't the problem -- but in both cases the installation costs were over $3000, in one case closer to $4000. This for what one contractor told me was a 1-day job (for a crew of course). This seems awfully rich, because the entire job (furnace, water heater, elec air cleaner) is coming in between $7,000 to $8,000. I am told they will run gas pipe to the equipment from the meter, install everything, connect the furnace to the existing ductwork (with whatever needs to be adapted for that), run exhaust either thru the wall or up the chimney with a liner, and remove the old equipment. The house is a mid-50s bungalow with an 8-foot basement where the equipment lives. The furnaces are both 75,000 BTU hi-efficiency gas units (higher-priced was a Lennox, the other a Tempstar).
Is this a reasonable cost or am I missing something here?
It seems high, a state government agency in Wisconsin has estimated $3500 for an average replacement.
You might want to omit the electronic air cleaner since your furnace isn't going to be running all the time.
Be sure to have the furnace put on a dedicated electric circuit.
If air conditioning makes sense in your area, make it possible to add it later.
I had the exhaust run directly through the wall. You may want to draw outside air directly to the furnace to avoid a drafty basement (it will require another pipe).
So get quote #3 or even #4, and see if you are still surprised.
It may just come down to, if you don't like what they are charging, then don't do it. But if you want the work done, that is what it costs, no matter what you think it "should" cost.
Unless you have some plausible evidence that the first two contractors knew each other and discussed their bids with each other, that the two bids came in with numbers in a similar ballpark, BOTH of which were not to your expectations, then it sugests the problem MIGHT be in your expectations. So go get a 3rd bid.
Reply to NG only - this e.mail address goes to a kill file.
Doesn't sound that bad to me. It's a big job and running those exhausts and laying pipe for the meter, etc is fairly labor intensive.
While yer at it, you might look into a high efficiency wood pellet stove to be worked in there somehow too. Its cost per BTU is less than methane presently. Or see if geothermal heat pump might be something worth investigating for its lower long term operating costs.
The gas line you'll need anyway, but it may be worth at least investigating some other heating options since you're sorta starting fresh.
I wouldn't pay more than $3500 for the furnace and water heater including a
10 year parts/labor warranty.
I just had a condensing gas furnace (75k, Armstrong) installed for $2400 which included both intake and exhaust PVC pipes. The water heater should only be another $600 max more. You should expect to pay extra for the gas pipe to the meter. I'm not sure if the chimney will need a liner with ONLY the water heater vented to it. All this is no more than a long day's work for ONE person providing the gas and venting lines are not too complex. Keep looking for quotes. I found that the one/two man shops with small ads in the yellow pages provided the best quotes, some of the larger companies were up to $5000 just for the furnace!!! . Make sure they pull a permit BEFORE the job. Make sure the furnace is sized correctly for your home's heat loss.
Thanks for this -- just for info, the breakdiwn I got from the lowest of the 2 quotes went like this (all numbers are in Canadian dollars, but that's not much difference these days from US):
Furnace $1950 (92% eff. Tempstar) HW heater 40 gal forced vent $1250 Elec. air cleaner $600
Installation & removal $3200
This is from a 2-man shop and I like these guys from what I've seen to date. The other quote is from a bigger outfit and is about $500 more.
Gas is relatively new to this area and there are only about 1000 homes using it, so there ins't a lot of experience among contractors nor a lot of choice.
Natural gas is running about 1/3 the cost of pellet heat and that's at $3.20 a bag ($160/ton). You can run the numbers against your gas and electric rates here:
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Would be very cool if you can handle the install costs and have the ground that supports trenches over wells. Else it gets very expensive to install.
The problems with gas is you get locked into a monopoly that charges you even when you aren't using the product, is subject to outages and is far more dangerous than oil.
With oil you have multiple suppliers in competition that you can choose from, you have an on-site fuel supply that is not subject to outages from a back hoe miles away, and I think you'll find the ratio of peoples houses that have been destroyed by gas leaks compared to those destroyed by oil leaks astonishing.
Also if you want to be "green" you can burn biodiesel and/or waste veg. oil in your oil furnace as well, something you can't do with a gas furnace.
In spite of all your "cons' of gas, if it was available to me tomorrow, I'd change tomorrow. Do you honestly think oil is competitive in price? The dealers in this area are doing rather well for themselves and price between them varies a couple of pennies at best. Gas remains competitive to oil when priced in therms in most regions.
I've lived with gas for many years in previous houses and we still use it at work. In all of those years, I've never had an outage, but my oil dealer did run me out twice. In my lifetime (60 years) the score is Gas 0, Oil 2.
While I agree with you in principle, there are regional variations that make natural gas and fuel oil very close in pricing.
There was a time when natural gas was substantially less than fuel oil, but then the utilities built a bunch of peak demand electricity plants fueled by natural gas and that increased demand to the point that the gap is much smaller.
All energy is tied anyway, so increases in one for any reason will drive the others.
The last time I looked (not this year) there were significant differences in oil supplier costs on the order of $0.15+/gal. They also give senior discounts that my mother takes advantage of that are another $0.05/gal and a COD (really 3 day) discount that is a few more cents / gal.
Do your gas price comparisons include the amount that the gas monopolies charge you every month even if you use no gas? There is no such thing with oil companies and maintenance contracts are a separate thing applicable to both oil and gas.
Sorry I don't have 60 years of experience, but in 36 years I have never experienced a single oil outage. Even if I did have an outage, all it would mean is a trip to my local gas station for a couple 5gal cans of diesel which would last several days until a regular oil delivery, something that is not an option with gas. No need for "emergency deliveries.
I'd take gas in a minute over oil any day. I've had homes with both and in my experience, gas is far more reliable. The core of the problem is oil has to rely on spraying pressurized oil out of a hole the size of a human hair. It's common for the nozzle to get fouled and then the burner won't light. Plus, oil requires regular cleaning of the burner, replacement of the nozzle and fuel filter, etc. In my current home, I've been here 10 years and have never had to have a service call on my gas furnace, while it was common with oil heat.
I don't know where you live that you are so concerned with nat gas outage. In 25 years of nat gas service, I've never had it go out for even an hour. For the vast majority of folks, they are far more likely to lose electric power, and they don't have generators, which puts them out of commission. So, why worry about the far more remote possibility of a gas outage?
I've never had any reliability problems with oil burners or oil service.
The nozzles also cost about $6 and take 2 minutes to change. Very DIY friendly as are the filter at the tank and the filter screen on the pump. I can do this level of annual service on an oil burner in 15 minutes for >$20 and also inspect the condition of the burner, soot buildup and roughly check the combustion.
Unless a problem is noted with soot buildup or poor combustion I don't need to call in anyone for service. When I see a problem I can get a service call for a hundred dollars or so since I don't have a soot vac or combustion tester and can't really justify spending the money on since a service call every few years is pretty cheap.
I did take (and pass with the highest score in the class) an oil burner service class at a local tech school so I have a pretty good idea of what I'm looking at when I inspect the burner.
Gas furnaces are not immune to problems and indeed some dangerous problems like cracked heat exchangers can go unnoticed readily on a gas furnace and actually kill you from CO buildup where the same problem on an oil furnace would typically choke you out of the house with detectable fumes before the CO would get you.
Annual inspections are an important safety requirement, whether you do them yourself with appropriate training or call someone in. Whether oil or gas the furnace does not necessarily need any actual service each year, but since you have a tech there inspecting the filters and nozzle get changed because they are too inexpensive not to just change regularly. Unless you get really dirty oil the nozzle and filters can easily last several years without problems.
I was in the northeast. I never had gas service, but I recall hearing numerous reports on the news over the years of various areas having gas service interruptions for various causes. In a large city vs. smaller suburban areas it's probably a less frequent occurrence, but when it does occur it probably affects more customers.
Why don't they have generators? Certainly loosing power can be more than an inconvenience since you can have significant losses from frozen pipes in cold weather and lost food in hot weather. A small generator is cheap insurance against those losses.
Because they are not "far more remote" unless you are in a large city.
The much higher safety risk of gas is also another reason for oil. I recall a brief ad campaign by a gas company touting gas as "Clean, Safe, Dependable" which mysteriously changed to "Clean, Dependable" presumably after a false advertising lawsuit.
Thousands of gas explosions every year vs. about zero oil explosions every year certainly calls that "Safe" claim into question. The hundreds of CO deaths each year are heavy on the gas furnace failure end due to the lower detectability of the fumes from a gas furnace vs. oil.
The cleanliness claim is also questionable since a modern properly maintained oil burner is just as clean as a modern properly maintained gas burner. The clean claim is largely based on the bogus comparison between a new gas burner and a 50yr old oil burner.
The efficiency claims you also see are also questionable with the difference between top oil and gas units being only a couple percent. Unless you have already done every possible thing you can with regards to insulating, caulking, high R windows and ERVs, that couple percent is pretty irrelevant and might save you enough to buy a cup of coffee each year.
And again being locked into a monopoly that charges you every month whether you use any product or not is the final nail in the gas coffin for me.
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